El Salvador

Days 1 to 2: El Tunco and the Pacific Coast

Fly into Monseñor Óscar Arnulfo Romero International Airport (SAL), 44 km southeast of San Salvador. Pick up your rental car immediately at the airport; you will need it from the first moment and the logistics of the entire route depend on having it from arrival. The drive from the airport to El Tunco on the coast takes approximately one hour and forty-five minutes to two hours via the CA-1 Panamerican Highway west and then south on the coastal road CA-2 Litoral. The roads are paved, well-signed and straightforward; the transition from the capital's outskirts through coffee-growing foothills to the Pacific coast happens visually over the last 30 minutes of the drive.

El Tunco is the main beach and social hub on El Salvador's Surf City coast, named for the rock offshore that from certain angles resembles a pig (tunco in local slang). The town itself is a single road of cafés, surf shops, hostels, hammock bars and warung-style restaurants that runs parallel to the beach. Most things on the road are broadly equivalent in quality; it is the kind of place where you find what you like by walking and deciding. The waves at El Tunco are intermediate to advanced, shaped by the black volcanic sand beach and a reef break that produces powerful, hollow left-handers. If you are a competent surfer, this break is excellent. If you are a beginner, El Tunco is not the ideal learning beach; the waves are real and the bottom is volcanic sand over reef. Surf schools operate here and lessons are available, but the honest advice is that learners will have more success at the gentler breaks nearby.

El Sunzal, two kilometres east by car (not walkable despite what maps suggest), is a better beginner break: longer rides, slightly more forgiving and with surf schools specifically oriented toward first-timers. Zonte (El Zonte) further west is even calmer, a smaller community with a more relaxed atmosphere and a Bitcoin Beach connection that brought international attention to the area.

For a non-surfer day: horseback riding along the beach runs through several local operators near El Tunco and costs approximately $15 to $25 per hour. The black sand beach under the volcanic cliffs, with riders silhouetted against the Pacific, is one of the more visually striking experiences on the route.

For the scuba divers: dive operators work out of El Tunco and the nearby Las Flores area. El Salvador's Pacific diving is not coral reef in the Caribbean sense; it is volcanic rock, strong currents, marine life including turtles, rays and occasional whale sharks in season. One-tank dives run approximately $60 to $80.

Eating in El Tunco: Tunco Veloz Pizzería is the recommendation: thin-crust pizza with a genuinely good playlist and a relaxed atmosphere that is better than it sounds for a beach pizza spot. For a change, the other road restaurants serve fresh fish, ceviche and the local staple of pupusas (thick corn tortillas filled with cheese, beans, loroco flower or chicharrón, cooked on a griddle). Dale Dale and Point Break are both reliable café stops but construction noise in the immediate area can make working or lingering harder in the day.

Evening: Old Man's at El Tunco (or the equivalent bar strip depending on who is running what at time of visit) provides the evening beach bar experience standard on this coast: cold beer, the sound of waves, hammocks, and the kind of social scene that forms when travellers from multiple different starting points end up in the same small town.